11/03/2009 @ 6:00PM

People Power

The fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, was a moment of pure joy. Since Tom Brockaw had fortuitously brought a camera team to Berlin, the pictures of East and West Germans dancing at the Brandenburg Gate quickly flashed around the globe. Though some inveterate skeptics warned of a resurgence of the Reich, most observers were happy about the lifting of the Iron Curtain that had divided the Old Continent for two generations.

Preceded by the challenge of the independent Polish trade union Solidarnosc and the Hungarian reburial of the leaders of the 1956 revolt, the opening of the East German border symbolized the end of the Cold War. The liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet domination also ended the nightmare of a superpower arms race that could have led to the nuclear annihilation of the globe. Some commentators euphorically proclaimed it the “end of history.” Twenty years later politicians continue to compete in claiming credit for the miraculous event.

One version of the story, propagated by Cold Warriors, claims that the U.S. had “armed the Soviet Union to death.” Partisans of President Reagan’s Star Wars initiative assert that it was the costs of keeping up with technological innovation by the West that finally brought the “evil empire” to its knees. As Gorbachev’s memoirs show, this explanation is at best a half-truth. To be sure, the arms race was one of the reasons why the Russian leader decided that the Soviet Union had to reform its stagnating economy. But ultimately it was the spread of détente, helped by his personal rapport with the U.S. president that allowed Gorbachev to suspend the Brezhnev doctrine and set the satellites free to pursue–in the words of Frank Sinatra’s song “I Did It My Way”–their own road to communism. More important than armed hostility was the improvement of the international climate in bringing down the Wall.

Another somewhat mistaken view, propounded by neo-liberals, interprets 1989 as the inevitable triumph of capitalism over socialism. Simply put, gaudy Western shopping centers won out over drab Eastern state-run stores. There is something to the argument that the promises of a consumer society with dozens of different kinds of soft tissue proved more attractive than the abrasive, industrial-strength toilet paper offered under socialism. Moreover, the young were fascinated by Western rock rather than international liberation songs. But the difficult transition from the plan to the market that threw one-fifth of the population out of work reaffirmed the importance of a functioning social safety net. And the recent financial meltdown has shown to all but the most greedy investment banker that unrestrained competition can be as dangerous as the almighty plan. Put off by destructive potential of casino-capitalism, most East Europeans today prefer the German compromise of a social market economy.

A third explanation comes somewhat closer to the truth: that of freedom as the prime motive of the democratic awakening in Eastern Europe. Many of the banners during mass demonstrations called for an end to dictatorship, the restoration of civil rights or the chance to travel without restraint. But a thirst for freedom alone can not overthrow a dictatorship unless it is translated into concrete action. It took a transnational grass roots movement of courageous Polish workers, Hungarian activists, German refugees and Czech dissidents braving considerable risks in order to revive civil society and regain space for public protest. In contrast to a widely held cliché, the communist dictatorship did not collapse of its own accord–rather it had to be pushed by mass demonstrations in order to agree on free elections and the return of democracy.

The fall of the Wall was magical because it signaled the peaceful triumph of people’s power over a regime that commanded enormous repressive force. Unlike the Revolutionary War in America, the terror during the French Revolution or the bloodshed during the Bolshevik seizure of power, it was nonviolent civil resistance that brought down the ugly concrete barrier that had imprisoned East Germans and East Europeans since August 1961. Keeping the process peaceful took extraordinary restraint by the dissidents inspired by the peace movement, by the frustrated people who wanted to vent their anger, by the communist rulers tempted to let the tanks roll, and by the international leaders who preferred the bipolar stability of the Cold War. That the rebels–save for those in Romania–remained peaceful, that the communist dictators were willing to give in to the popular pressure, that both sides agreed to negotiate at the Round Table, that the citizens repudiated communism in the first free elections and that the international community actually accepted their choice–all this still seems quite miraculous.

Can this new kind of peaceful revolution be repeated elsewhere; is this a promising 21st century method of overthrowing dictatorial regimes? It would be nice if nonviolence could succeed at other times and in other places; the world would be a better place for it. Certainly the orange revolution in the Ukraine, the toppling of the Milosevic regime in Serbia and a few other examples seem to have followed this pattern. But the dead of China’s Tienanmen Square and the defeat of the democracy movement in Iran illustrate that civil resistance can be put down with military force. The fall of the Wall is such a marvelous event precisely because an astounding number of factors had to combine in an unexpected way in order to produce such a fortunate outcome.

The hindsight of two decades, therefore, suggests that we ought to refrain from drawing over-simplified conclusions about the effectiveness of arms races, economic incentives or dreams of freedom. Instead we ought to be glad that in spite of the dismal record of wars, genocides and catastrophes, history can occasionally turn out well.